


Full of Sunk Treasure

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: Short but Sometimes Sweet: Damerey Collection [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Astronaut Rey, Discussion of tragic backstory, F/M, Finn ships it, Fluff, Is this a love letter to Damerey or libraries, Librarian Poe, Library AU, Light Angst, Meeting your Celebrity Crush, Modern AU, Third Chapter is rated E, You Decide, does this count as fluff?, fluff adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-28 01:23:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Poe Dameron is the head librarian at Jakku Library. Sure, it's not the job he'd envisioned for himself when he was a teenager, but a quiet life is suiting him just fine, and he gets to help people in new and creative ways every day.Finn, his best friend, schedules a guest speaker one day, and Poe's too forgetful and distracted to check who it is.Imagine his surprise when he rounds the corner in the children's section and discovers that the guest is a woman he's used to seeing on the cover of magazines.Worse, she seems to be entirely aware of his massive (logical, obvious, terrible) crush on her, and she seems fairly determined to torment him over it.





	1. At Your Local Library

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the work comes from the Virginia Woolf quote:
> 
> "I ransack public libraries and find them full of sunk treasure"
> 
>  
> 
> Inspiration, namely, the setting and the way Rey tries to flirt with Poe, came from a collection posted by [Supremequeenofthenerds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supremequeenofthenerds/pseuds/Supremequeenofthenerds)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I'm fully aware that Rey is WAY too young to be an astronaut -- the youngest ever was Sally Ride at 32 -- but let's have fun with this fic and pretend that she's just a whiz kid like she is in canon)

Poe’s walking through the children’s section, hoping to fix the display case behind the kid friendly computers, when he hears a lilting, musical voice reading aloud. A guest reader? That’s nice, Finn must have scheduled one and not told him.

No, wait, Finn _did_ tell him there would be a guest in Children’s today, and Poe just forgot, which is honestly typical. Finn always teases him that if he doesn’t  read it in a book, Poe forgets things automatically.

Tilting his head to listen closely while fidgeting with his massive collection of keys, Poe immediately recognizes the joyful prose of _Rosie Revere, Engineer._

He walks over to the read aloud corner, a brightly painted area with blocks and murals and squishy chairs – and then he recognizes the reader.

A beautiful woman in her mid-twenties with chestnut brown hair half-up, hazel eyes alight as her slender arm holds the book open to face towards her enraptured listeners – the carpet is more full than Poe’s ever seen it – while she weaves the tale of Rosie Revere. She pauses for dramatic effect between pages, her free hand held out, frozen near her face as if she’s gasping for breath, and her audience squeals and begs to hear the result of Rosie’s experiment. The reader’s bright eyes sweep the carpet before landing on Poe.

She catches Poe staring at her, and she smiles, cheekily, and winks before turning the page.

Poe, well. Poe hyperventilates.

He walks away quickly, and when he reaches the non-fiction section, he runs his hands through his hair, takes his glasses off and polishes them about fifty times on his shirt, and then puts them back on, muttering to himself.

Then he spots his friend, the library’s self-elected program coordinator, _the_ _traitor._ Finn Trooper, his roommate and _supposed_ best friend is walking towards him with a collection of books to shelve.

“You! When you said we had a ‘guest’ in the children’s section today, I thought you meant that the _puppet guy_ was coming back,” Poe hisses at Finn on his way by.

“Yeah?” Finn looks up from his cart quizzically and pauses. “And?”

“And? And?” Poe seethes. “Finn, that is _Rey Kenobi._ ” Rey Kenobi, the astronaut, is in their Podunk little library, in freaking Jakku, Arizona, reading books to children and looking entirely unaware that she just eliminated Poe’s ability to form complete thoughts for the next ten or so years.

“Yeah, she and I met growing up, at a community after-school program,” Finn shrugs. “You didn’t know that?”

“No! I did not know that!” Poe smacks his forehead, and groans. He does know that she grew up here, so he shouldn’t be this surprised. He rubs his eyes, tiredly. “I most certainly did not know you knew her.” He does know for a _fact_ that he’s talked about Rey Kenobi, at length, in front from Finn while drunk and wanting to pontificate on all the reasons why she might secretly be a goddess sent to Earth to save mankind.

Finn grins at him, evilly. “You mean, I never mentioned it? Even though I’ve _seen_ that you have her _Time_ Person of the Year cover photo up on your wall?”

It’s a magnificent cover, really. It’s simplistic, at first glance: a straight-on portrait of Rey Kenobi, the camera capturing her from the shoulders up. Her chin tilts out stubbornly, eyebrows stern, but eyes alight with _something,_ some quality that Poe understands only comes around every few thousand years.

“What is it they called her?” Finn pretends to think. “Something….about being …”

“The last Jedi,” Poe grits through his teeth. She’d been the only person to maintain consciousness on the disastrous _Jedi_ mission last year; when all the other experienced astronauts, the pilots included, had fainted from lack of oxygen, the computers on the fritz and controls unreachable from the ground, she’d managed to stay awake and _landed the damn shuttle single-handedly,_ saving the lives of the mission crew. And then, with a set of broken ribs and a number of other issues from the crash, she’d stood in front of Congress and fought with them for more funding for space research, not even two weeks after the miracle landing.

It’s a really bad ass portrait, actually, the text reading, “Kenobi: The Last Jedi,” emblazoned at the bottom, and she’s bad ass, the challenging set to her shoulders, the line of her jaw, the power than emanates from her gaze –

Yeah. Poe’s looked at it a couple times. So what.

“If you tell her –“ Poe warns, fruitlessly.

Finn cackles, evilly. The bastard. “Who’s to say I haven’t already?” Poe moans and buries his face in his hands, and he doesn’t look up even when Finn clasps him on the shoulder in a way that’s obviously meant to be reassuring.

“Don’t worry, dude,” Finn says soothingly. “I didn’t actually tell her. But you can tell her yourself, I told her the head librarian would want to talk to her when she was done reading.”

“You what?” Poe half-screeches, almost forgetting to use his library voice. He lowers his voice and tries again. “Sorry, but you…you _what?_ Finn, buddy, why?”

“Because,” Finn grins at him not seeming to care that he’s ruined his friend’s life. “I said you wanted to talk about scheduling her for a summer series about women in STEM.” Poe feels his jaw working furiously because honestly that sounds great and his number one job as a librarian is making sure resources are available for free to the public for their general benefit, but _damn Finn,_ why does it have to be with the woman Poe’s had a not-so-secret crush on for a year?

“Good luck!” Finn’s walking away with the cart, a maddening spring in his step before Poe can think of another question.

He walks back to the children’s section, at a loss of what to do next, and leans against the short bookshelf that cordons off the carpet where the children are engaging Rey Kenobi in an enthusiastic question and answer session.

“When did you know you wanted to be an astronaut?” A small girl asks her, hand still in the air.

Rey laughs, and damn if it’s not the prettiest sound Poe’s ever been blessed to hear. “I knew I wanted to do something with space in middle school, and after a very important person helped me decide, I went to college to study astrophysics,” Rey answers.

“What’s astrophysics?” A chubby kid in the back shouts, and Rey laughs again.

“It means I studied the way things move through space,” Rey explains. “I like to see how things like planets and stars move and behave, and I try to predict – predict means the same thing as guessing, but with a little bit of information on your side – how they’ll behave under certain conditions, how things we haven’t discovered yet could behave.”

That’s met with a chorus of “cooooooool!” from the carpet, and Rey grins at them, elbows on her knees as she leans forward.

One timid hand raises from the corner, and Rey nods at the skinny girl with braids.

“Were you scared?” The girl asks, eyes wide. “When you almost died?”

The other kids get very quiet – it seems that they, at least, understand that unspoken rule of the world, where you do not ask people so bluntly about their trauma – and they all wait with bated breath for Rey’s response.

Poe’s leaning forward a little more, too. In all the interviews she’d given after the crash, Rey had been asked questions about science and heroism and funding for research. No one had stopped to ask if she was scared, and Poe suddenly feels very strange about that fact; he realizes that he wants to know the answer, if this woman he admires so much was scared shitless, the way he knows he’d be.

“Yes.” Rey says it simply, without regret or sadness on her face. She smiles at the girl, and then the rest of the audience. She looks each of them in the face in turn while she continues: “I was very, very scared, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, and more scared than I hopefully will ever be again. But, when you are scared, it does not mean you need to give up. I didn’t give up because other people needed me, and I knew I needed to save them, and myself. So I did. I took a deep breath, and counted backwards from five, and told myself there was no reason why fear should stop me from doing what needed to be done.”

Rey looks each person in the audience in the face while she speaks, and she lands on Poe when she finishes. “Fear’s tricky. It tells you that you’re only ever going to be afraid again. But it’s lying to you. Sometimes, the best part of your life comes after you’re done being afraid. You just have to keep going to find out.”

***

To his dying day, Poe won’t be able to tell anyone how he got through a stammered conversation with Rey Kenobi (who kept smiling calmly and kindly at him the whole time), but he can say that he’s secured her as a guest speaker over the course of the next eight Saturdays in the Multi Media room. Rey shakes his hand before she leaves, and Poe manages to squeak out some formality that’s sufficient enough to make her smile at him warmly before she walks out of the library, pulling sunglasses out of her satchel and putting them on.

The doors hiss shut behind her, and Poe rests his elbows on the circulation desk and sighs.

“Well, that was probably the most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen,” Finn comments out of nowhere, startling a yelp out of Poe.

“Wh—how long were you standing there?”

“Long enough, pretty boy.” Finn walks away, laughing. “Long enough.”

***

Rey Kenobi returns the next Saturday, and she gives a riveting presentation on representation of women in physics. There’s a crowd of girls – and boys, to be fair – aged 5 to 18, and they pack the small auditorium to the brim. After the presentation, Rey puts up a list of recommended books and where they are in the library and encourages everyone present to go find a book that suits their reading level, one that could inspire them to be who they were meant to be.

It’s all very inspirational, and Poe barely finds the presence of mind to trip over to her at the end and thank her for coming.

“That was really cool, how you tied in the library,” he thinks to add at the end. “Are you sure you aren’t a librarian, Ms. Kenobi?”

At that she – _blushes?_ He’s gotta be hallucinating, because there’s no way in hell he made Rey Kenobi blush.

“I wish,” she laughs, sweetly. She lifts her hand to his bicep and squeezes, gently. “I wish, Mr. Dameron.” Rey wanders off to sign some autographs for a couple of excited preteens before Poe can remember how to move his mouth.

***

The next couple Saturdays pass in similar fashion, and the crowds get bigger and bigger.

“I didn’t even know Jakku had this many citizens,” Poe comments to Finn, drily, one day in the back of the auditorium.

“Shhh,” Finn hushes him, standing on his tiptoes and recording Rey’s presentation on a tablet checked out from their tech section. “This is going on the twitter page, Dameron, and our followers don’t need to know about your crush on Rey.”

“What?” Poe’s face flames red. “No, Finn, they’ll definitely hear what you just said, delete that  – stop recording – Finn!” They wrestle for control of the tablet, only stopping when a kindergarten-aged boy turns around and shushes them sternly.

Up at the lectern, Rey Kenobi pauses in her talk and smiles mischievously up at the back row. Finn grins back, and Poe burns brighter than he ever has, and walks quickly out the doors.

***

At the seventh week, Rey Kenobi asks him what he’s doing for the rest of the day as she packs up her laptop.

“I don’t know, I need to update our catalogue,” Poe says mournfully, picking at a stray thread on the sleeve of his sweater. “You?”

“I was thinking of getting a drink,” Rey answers. She cocks her head and smiles disarmingly at him. “How long does updating a catalogue take?”

“I don’t know.” Poe pushes his glasses up his nose, again. He really needs new frames. “Probably a few hours. I hope you have fun!”

Rey looks strangely irritated at his response – Finn, who’d been standing there next to them for the exchange, knocks his elbow against Poe’s – and she nods jerkily before storming up the steps and out the door.

“That’s weird,” he says to Finn when the door slams shut behind her.

“You’re a dumbass,” Finn says, walking away.

“I mean, yeah, but why this time?” Poe calls at his retreating back. “Why this time, Finn?”

***

Rey Kenobi marches up to circulation on a Thursday. It’s not even a lecture day, so Poe asks, perhaps rudely (he’s a little dazed from the book he’s currently reading, it happens, he gets lost in a world and then gets a little abrupt when he’s pulled out of it, so no, he shouldn’t be reading at work):

“Why are you here?”

Rey looks a little taken aback, so he amends his question, “Sorry, I mean, what brings you in here on a Thursday, Ms. Kenobi?”

“I need to check some books out,” she explains, and dumps them on the counter. Poe blinks in surprise – most patrons use the self-checkout these days – and then shrugs.

“Library card?” Rey rolls her eyes and then hands him Finn’s card. “You don’t have your own?”

“Not anymore,” she says cheerfully. “I don’t think mine’s good anymore, it’s thirteen years old.”

“Yeah, we did get a new system,” Poe nods. “I could sign you up for a new one, switch them out, if you want.”

“No!” Rey almost shouts it, and then she winces. “Sorry, sorry. No, I uh – I just need these books. You know? These. Books.”

She nods down at the pile, and Poe shrugs again before scanning Finn’s card and handing it back to Rey. He takes the scanner off its stand and begins to check out her stack of books, idly examining the titles she’s chosen, the machine beeping with each book scanned.

 _Mars and Venus on a Date._ Beep.

 _Modern Dating._ Beep.

 _So Much I Want to Tell You._ Beep.

 _Dating for Dummies._ Beep.

“That’s uh,” Poe clears his throat when he gets to the sex-help books. “Going for a theme?” He asks weakly. He really shouldn’t comment on a patron’s personal reading choices, but he can feel his face flaming and needs to say something.

“Mhm,” Rey leans over the desk and smiles at him. It’s really more of a smirk, honestly, and Poe’s hot under the collar. Really hot. “You could say that it’s… relevant to current interests.”

Oh fuck, she knows he has a massive crush on her. She knows. She knows, and she’s teasing him.

Poe’s never been great at hiding his emotions, so he scowls at her. It must be ferocious because she stands up straight and blinks, twice.

“Very funny,” he snaps, and finishes checking the books out. “I'm sure it's very funny, torturing the small town librarian. There you go, Ms. Kenobi, these are due back in fourteen days.” He shoves the books across the counter at her and aggressively stares at the exit and then back at her.

Rey collects her books and wanders away. Poe’s scowl fades in less than a second, and he buries his face in his hands.

He’d feel better about his reaction if she hadn’t looked so close to crying. Who gets that upset when they’re called out for making fun of someone?

Weird.

***

Poe’s shelving two weeks after The Incident, as he’s been calling it, when he’s startled out of his daydream (where he, you know, didn’t freak out at a very pretty woman and chase her from his library perhaps forever) by someone saying his name.

“Hey, Poe,” Rey Kenobi’s standing next to him suddenly, and the aisle feels even smaller. “Is it okay if we talk for awhile?

He nods, nervously. He wants to talk to her, but he can’t imagine what she’d want to say to him. The last time they’d spoken, he’d been such an ass. “Yeah. And look, I’m sorry about the other day.”

“Don’t be,” Rey shakes her head, and Poe groans at the kicked-puppy look on her face.

“I am, though,” Poe mutters, and Rey laughs, softly. “So anyway, shoot. What did you want to talk about?”

“Can I ask you a question, first?” Rey looks nervous too, chewing her bottom lip.

“Of course, Rey, whatever you want. My job is to answer questions.” _And I’m a dumbass, it’s official. Why can’t I just say ‘hi, I like you a lot and you’re really pretty and I was only mean because I got defensive.’ Would that be so hard, Dameron? Would it?_

“Right.” Rey adjusts her satchel, and then asks, “Did you know Lor San Tekka? He was head librarian here years ago?” She sits down next to him without further ado, and she sprawls out in the aisle, her back against the shelves and legs stretched in front of her. Poe smiles down at her before answering.

“Yeah,” He nods. “Lor trained me when I took over five years ago. I really liked him.” He’s dead now, pancreatic cancer, but he’d had a long and full life, and Poe had been amazed at all the people who’d shown up for the funeral, all the lives he had touched.

“Can I tell you a story about him?”

Poe nods, not knowing where this is going. He kneels to get to the books on the lower shelves and keeps working, not wanting to freak her out by staring at her.

“So, if you’ve read any of the biographies, you know I’m an orphan, and my great uncle took me in when I was a baby.” That’s a fairly blunt way to start out, but if Poe’s learned anything about Rey Kenobi, it’s that she doesn’t mince her words.

Poe doesn’t see the point in lying, so he says. “I know.”

Rey smiles, looking at her clasped hands, and he realizes it’s the first time he’s seen her that she hasn’t looked exuberantly confident. She looks very, very small, despite her height and her lean muscles. She looks very young, too, and Poe remembers that at 25, she was the youngest American ever in space. A mission specialist, not even a pilot astronaut, and she’d landed that shuttle and saved so many lives.

“So, what you don’t know, because no one knows except for me and Finn – it’s not really, you know, biography fodder, at least none that I’d wanted—, is that my great uncle died when I was five. I went into foster care. And that term, _care_ , is really a loose term. My foster father was a beast of a man, and I hated him, and after a while, I started to hate everything.” Poe stops shelving, officially now, so he can give her his full attention. He sits back on his heels and rests his hands on his thighs.

“I was mean, and suspicious, and I got into fights all the time. I’d loved it when Uncle Ben read to me as a child, but by middle school, I hadn’t cracked open a book willingly in years. It wasn’t going to help me survive, you know? So I figured I could do without.”

“So one day, and it was hot as balls out,” (Poe snorts involuntarily at the simile, and Rey gives him a quick smile before continuing), “and the house didn’t have any air conditioning. So I jumped on my skateboard, and I went through town, trying to see if there was anywhere cooler. There was one place, of course, that was free to enter and free to stay and had A.C.”

“The library,” Poe supplies, quietly.

Rey nods. “The library. I went in, and I automatically felt like I didn’t belong. It was so clean, and quiet, and … pretty.” Poe’s never thought of the JPL as pretty, but he supposes it is, with it’s warm brown carpet and green walls and soft couches. “I wandered around for few minutes, and I remember looking up at the shelves and being weirdly pissed that there were so many.” Rey grins ruefully. “I was a real jackass of a kid, let me tell you. So, this cute old man walks up to me, and asks me how my day is going, asks me if I need any help.”

“Lor?” Poe asks.

“Lor.” She confirms. “I probably said something smartass like, ‘you can help me by going away,’ and he just smiled and said he’d be over at the desk. I felt bad, right away, because he was the first person to ask me about how I was feeling in probably months, and he hadn’t tried to kick me out or yell at me for any reason, so I shuffled over to him a few minutes later and told him I was sorry.” Rey shakes her head, wonderingly. “He told me I shouldn’t be _sorry._ He told me I should be _curious._ And then he asked me my name, and I told him, and he told me his.” Rey’s hands move around animatedly, waving through the air as she gets further into the story, and Poe’s mesmerized. “And then he asked what I was interested in, and I was so embarrassed, you know? Because it was so childish, and so stupid, but I told him that I liked space shit.”

Poe laughs, despite the general seriousness of the story, and Rey laughs too. “Did you actually say _space shit?”_ He asks, delighted. He couldn’t imagine ever cursing in front of Lor San Tekka, who was hands down, the most composed, elegant person he’d ever met.

“Sure did,” Rey beams, and Poe does too because how could he not? “And Lor just nodded, and said that he liked space too, and he asked me a couple of other questions. Then I turned to leave, but he stopped me and handed me a can of soda from the vending machine out front.” That vending machine is still there, actually, and Poe’s pretty sure it’s older than time itself. He isn’t sure how it still works. “Lor said goodbye, and I did too, and then I grabbed my skateboard and booked it out of there.” Rey smirks at him at that, and says, “Get it? Booked?”

“You’re a real Bob Hope,” Poe rolls his eyes but smiles at her encouragingly, non-verbally telling her to keep going.

“Anyway, I came back a few days later to get away from … Unkar,” Rey spits the name like a curse, and Poe wonders, darkly, what that man did to make her look like that, almost feral in rage. “And Lor was there, smiling at me like he’d been waiting for me. He called me over to the desk,” she jabs her thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of circulation, “And he pulled out a stack of books from behind his computer. It was a bunch of non-fiction books about outer space. He’d put a little sticky note on the front, that said ‘For Rey, who loves the stars.’ I still have that note.” Rey smiles, and Poe sees that there’s a tear in the corner of her eye.

He shifts from kneeling to sitting next to her, mirroring her posture, so their feet line up. He knocks his shoe against hers, reassuringly, and Rey looks up at him, and Poe loses his breath. Because that’s what she is: breathtaking.

“So, he got me settled at one of the big tables in the back corner. It was like he could tell I didn’t want my back to anyone, he could tell I was skittish.” She goes back to looking at her entwined fingers, and yeah, Poe hates her foster father, he really does. “And he gave me another Sprite, even though you aren’t supposed to drink soda in a library, and he left me to go do some work. And I sat there for hours, Poe. I sat there for hours and hours and I read every single book, even though I hadn’t cared about anything in years.” Rey grips the loose material of her jeans, knuckles white from the stress, and Poe covers one of her hands without thinking. She relaxes, infinitesimally, and flips her hand so their fingers can lace together.

It’s the most intimate thing he’s ever done, he thinks, listening to a woman who shouldn’t even care that he exists tell him these private, precious things about herself while holding his hand, hiding away from the rest of the world between mountains of books, galaxies of information and stories about people neither of them will ever meet; just like, by all means and logic and probability, Rey and Poe shouldn’t have met. And yet, here they are.

“So, after a few hours, he comes back, and he sits down across from me. And Lor says, ‘so, Rey, what did you learn today?’ And I must have talked for another hour, and he sat there and listened to all of it, like I wasn’t wasting his time even though I’m sure he had better things to do, and Lor even asked me questions here and there. Questions that weren’t patronizing, but ones that got me thinking, about space and traveling to distant planets. At the end, Lor got up and thanked me for talking to him, and he walked away. No pressure about coming back, no pressure for thanking him, or making it seem like I owed him anything.”

Rey wipes her eyes with her free hand, and honestly, Poe needs to as well at this point. “It was the first time an adult had shown any interest in me in years. No one at home cared what I did as long as I kept breathing enough to be useful, and my teachers had given up on me at school because all I did was snarl at them, and honestly, I’d given up on myself, I was so angry and mean to everyone. But Lor didn’t care. So, I re-shelved all the books he’d chosen for me, and I came back the next day, and he helped me find more books, and at the end of the day,  I signed up for a library card.”

Rey fishes around in her leather satchel, and pulls out her wallet. “Here,” she says softly, flipping it open. She thumbs through it, and Poe can see her pilot’s license, her driver’s license, an Amex, and then –

A beat-up, faded Jakku Public Library card, mint green from age, the barcode scratched but ID number still legible. It’s signed _Rey Kenobi_ in shaky cursive, and the date in the corner reads 2006.

“I still have it,” Rey smiles at it, and she hands it to Poe for inspection. He holds it reverently, weighing the plastic in his hand. “I wouldn’t have gotten through high school without Lor, I know it. I didn’t have a computer at home, but he taught me how to use the ones here. He taught me how to research, how to apply for colleges, and he helped me file for scholarships.” Poe gives her back the card, and she tucks it away, gently, before stashing her wallet back in her satchel. “I owe everything to this library, Poe. I’m not here to torture you, even if you think so.”

Rey turns her eyes on him, and Poe feels impossibly, impossibly small, sitting next to the woman he had a crush on before he even knew her, the woman who has hidden depths he never could have imagined, and now that she’s showing him some of them, he hates that he ever pretended to know her from a few interviews and a few biographies.

“I like the library,” Rey whispers, and he knows she isn’t just whispering because of where they are. She blinks, fragments of liquid splintering across her eyes and catching in her lashes. Poe wipes a tear away from her cheek unthinkingly, and Rey takes a deep, shuddering breath, squeezing his hand in hers. “And I like the current librarian. There isn’t really much else to say about it.”

Rey releases his hand and stands, unfolding her long legs; she smiles down at Poe. “See you around, Dameron.” She walks out of the aisle before he can formulate a response to all of that, satchel hitting the back of her knees with every step.

Once she’s out of sight, Poe groans and folds his legs up to his chest, slamming his face into his knees and not caring when his glasses cut into the bridge of his nose. He briefly debates the merits of pulling down the bookshelf behind him on top of him, because God.

He’s an idiot. 


	2. Like an Open Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe made a mistake, Finn yells at him, and Rey continues to fascinate Poe Dameron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mentions of past abuse, cursing aplenty, frank discussions of sexual history, and some mildly sexy times in a library

Poe’s day goes from crappy to worse when he gets home.

He’s been friends with Finn Trooper for four years, now, ever since the younger man started working at the JPL, and he’s seen him in all kinds of moods: boisterous, playful, excited, moody – but never, ever has he seen Finn pissed.

Until today.

When Poe comes home, Finn’s hanging up the phone, muttering a quick goodbye to whoever’s on the other line. The silence that falls after Finn sets the phone down is nothing short of thunderous.

“Hey,” Poe starts. He’s cut off by a very aggressive finger jab from Finn.

“Don’t.” He warns, nostrils flared and jaw set. “Don’t even fucking…” Finn storms out of the room, and then comes back with a photo album, which he slams down on the kitchen table. “You. Here. Now.” Finn barks, much like a drill sergeant. Poe finds himself obeying without thinking, warily walking towards Finn and his album.

His roommate’s flipping through the pages quickly, muttering under his breath, and when Poe gets close, he sees a rapid-fire stream of pictures that include Finn and his older brother, a couple kids in marching band uniforms, Finn in a soccer jersey, and Finn and his high school girlfriend – and a common motif throughout all the pictures: a head of chestnut hair that Poe’s grown very familiar with.

“Here,” Finn snaps, yanking viciously on Poe’s sleeve and then pointing viciously down on the open page. “Look at that.”

It’s a picture of Finn, Rey Kenobi, and Lor San Tekka. It’s the only picture on the page, framed sacredly almost: Lor and Finn flank Rey, who’s sitting down. She’s paler, and a hell of a lot thinner (and she isn’t even big _now,_ Poe reflects, horrified), and she looks absolutely exhausted. There’s circles dark enough to be bruises under her eyes – and an actual bruise, fading, on her cheekbone. Still, she’s smiling, and it’s a ghost of her current sunny smile, but she’s smiling.

All three people are flipping off the camera.

“It’s from the day her case for emancipation got accepted,” Finn says, softer. When Poe looks at him, Finn’s eyes are rounded downward, intensely sad. Mournful. “She had just turned 17 in this picture. Her foster father had been beating her for years – but it was 2009, and phone footage was more reliable, and one of her foster brothers had the balls to record Plutt when he was beating her. The kid was too young to step in, but even that was so fucking brave to do with that monster.”

Finn looks like he wants to vomit. Poe feels like he wants to vomit.

“She almost died,” Finn says, voice breaking. “she almost fucking died, but she got out, and she survived, and she graduated from high school a few months after this; she got the fuck out of Jakku on a full fucking ride, finished college in three years, and was done with her Master’s by 22. Rey’s the smartest fucking person I know, and she’s also one of the kindest and most loyal people I know. So imagine my surprise when she calls me in tears, about some fucking fight you two had weeks ago, and now she’s so upset she can’t even –” Finn cuts himself off with an angry shake of the head.

“I told her I was –”

“Don’t fucking say you told her you were sorry,” Finn says, coldly. He closes the photo album reverently, and holds it in his arms close to his chest. “Rey’s had a lifetime of _sorry._ I want Rey to have something _good._ You know she’s been on three dates her entire life? And I was one of them, I was her date to prom, and we went as fucking friends. She cried when I gave her flowers, Poe, and we weren’t even interested in each other like that.”

Poe’s about to cry, personally. He fucked up. God, he fucked up. 

But Finn isn’t done. Not at all. “I told her to come to the library that day, Poe. I asked her, begged her even, when I heard she was spending the summer here. I told her that there was a guy there she might actually like, might actually trust. And she seems confident, she does, because you have to be when you go toe-to-toe with the universe like she has. And I mean that metaphorically, and literally, because god-fucking-damnit, the girl’s an actual astronaut hero. But Rey’s got so much baggage, more than any of us could ever dream of. She’s sensitive, but no one ever realizes it because she has all that swagger, and she’s so smart, and she’s learned how to survive, how to hide her weak spots. And all that shit you always said about her, before you knew her, before you even met her. All that shit about how she was so impressive, and powerful, and fascinating, and _luminous._ All that bullshit about how you just wished you could have a conversation with her, and you’d be happy.” Poe _does_ remember saying that, drunkenly. Many times. “I thought, huh, why the fuck not?  Poe’s a good guy. He’ll treat her right.”

Finn stalks past Poe, and pauses in the doorway to his room for his parting shot. “I’ve never been so furious about being wrong, Dameron.”

The door that slams between them seems as good as any punctuation Poe’s ever experienced.

***

After a week of walking on eggshells at home – a week that’s terrifyingly Rey Kenobi-free – Poe approaches Finn at work (where he can’t really scream at him, right? Not when there’s a second grader looking at chapter books five feet away from them?) and clears his throat.

“Hey, Finn,” Poe says weakly. “How’s Rey?”

Finn snorts. “You got some nerve,” he begins, but the small patron near them looks up, squinting, from his _Junie B. Jones_ book; so, Finn grabs Poe by the bicep and marches him away from the children’s section, over to the water fountains between YA and Adult.

“You got some nerve,” he hisses. Poe winces at the look on Finn’s face. “You got some real nerve waiting a week to ask that question.”

“In my defense, I thought you were going to kill me,” Poe mutters, rubbing his neck.

“In your defense, I did too,” Finn admits. He crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes at Poe. “You really wanna know how she is?”

“Yeah,” Poe breathes, “Yes, Finn, please, tell me she’s okay, tell me she’s not upset anymore –”

“I can’t do that,” Finn shrugs. “You’re asking the wrong question, anyway. It’s not _how_ Rey is. It’s _where_ Rey is.”

“What?” Poe blinks in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“It’s August,” Finn says, looking suddenly awkward. His eyes flit away briefly and then he resumes aggressive eye contact, something settling in his face. “She was on the fence about staying in Jakku anyway, her being here was supposed to be temporary; but then all summer she was going back and forth, and she made her mind up last week.”

“What?” Poe asks again. His knees are weak, and his vision’s tunneling down on his roommate. “What?”

“She’s gone, Poe,” Finn claps him on the shoulder, less angrily this time. “She didn’t think there was anything here worth sticking around for. She left this morning.” Finn shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty.

“But,” Poe protests. “But she –”

“Told you she liked you and you didn’t do a damn thing about it? Yeah. I remember.”

“Can –” Poe tries to formulate his thoughts into words but it’s not going well. Finn starts to walk away. “Can I have her number, at least? So I can call her?” _And explain that I was halfway to being in love with her, and for someone who loves books, I’m terrible with words, and in a different universe, a different life I’d be braver and closer to being the man she deserves, I could be a hero in a different life – I can call her and tell her I’m sorry that I’m a neurotic librarian who reads more than he sleeps and who wishes he had any of the words to tell her how perfect she is._

Not hearing the rest of Poe’s thought process, Finn flicks him off over his shoulder (and thank god there’s no one over here to see it, Poe would not be able to handle a complaint right now), and says, “Fuck you, Dameron.” There isn’t a lot of venom in the statement, but still. It feels pretty final.

***

 The next month passes by in a blur. Poe feels weirdly adrift, considering he spent less than a total of fifteen hours in Rey Kenobi’s presence before she got out of town and away from him.

“I fucked up,” he tells the cat he and Finn let into their apartment last year (after finding it hiding in their recycling bin). “I really fucked up.”

The orange and white calico yowls at him primly in agreement.

“Thanks, Bebe.” Poe scratches his cat fondly under the chin. “Knew I could count on you.” The loud and rusty purring of his beloved trash cat makes him feel a little less like the entire world is pissed at him.

***

In late September, Poe walks into his apartment and then squeaks like a small, frightened mouse when he sees who Finn is currently talking to.

Bebe meows dispassionately at him in response from his perch – on Rey Kenobi’s lap.  

Traitor. He lives with traitors.

“Hi,” he says, still squeaking. Poe clears his throat and then sets his stack of books on the kitchen counter. “Hello, Rey.”

“Hello, Poe,” Rey doesn’t look up from Bebe, who she’s currently got wrapped around her little finger due to her attentive provision of chin scritches.

“And look, Finn’s here too,” Finn snarks. Rey shoves him without looking up.

“Good to see you,” Poe says, luckily not stammering at all, but still so hellishly awkward. “Back in Jakku, I mean. Good to see you back in town.”

Rey does look up at that, if only to exchange an unreadable look with Finn. Poe can’t see Finn’s face from where he’s standing, but he does see him shrug his shoulders. Rey looks over at Poe, finally, finally, and her hazel eyes are just as beautiful, just as incandescent as ever. “Good to see you too, Dameron,” Rey says with finality. “Anyway, Finn and I were going to get dinner. So.” Rey stands up and deposits a now-sad Bebe on the ground. Rey walks to the door and leaves the apartment without another word.

“What the hell?” Poe hisses at Finn. “You couldn’t tell me she was visiting? I would have –” _Stayed away? Brought flowers? Done something to sacrifice my dignity to convince her that I care about her?_

Finn just shrugs. “She does whatever the hell she wants, man. I didn’t even know until today.”

“Okay,” Poe nods, uneasily. “Okay, is she staying at a hotel or here?”

God, he hopes it’s here.

God, he hopes it’s somewhere across town, or he’ll never fall asleep.

“Neither,” Finn answers, slipping a pair of sandals on. “She officially moved back to Jakku this morning, didn’t tell me about it til the truck had left. Said she didn’t want me throwing my back out trying to outlift her.” Finn does not interpret Poe’s silence as the indication of shock that it really is. “To be fair, I totally would have. Whatever, man, see you around.”

The door closes, and Bebe stalks over to weave around Poe’s ankles.

“What the hell?”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, meow.” Poe scoops his cat up and carries him into his room, where he stands for a few minutes before muttering “What the fuck?”

***

Rey Kenobi moves back to Jakku, if the tabloids are right, to work on a book. What kind of book, Poe has no idea, and it only drives him a little crazy.

Like, it combines his two favorite things: books, and Rey Kenobi. So yeah, he’s a little interested.

One day, she wanders into the library, and he sidles up next to her while she’s searching for something in the catalogue.

“Can I help you?” Poe asks in what he prays is a normal voice (he knows it’s not).

“I got it. Thank you, Mr. Dameron.” Rey looks up from the screen long enough to smile tightly at him. He continues to stand there, stupidly, trying to figure out what to say. Rey finishes her query and closes the tab. “Sorry, were you waiting for this? Don’t let me get in your way.” She disappears into the Non-Fiction section before he can confess his definitely, maybe, undying love for her.

Finn sees the entire interaction because of course he does. “Smooth,” Finn laughs, walking over to shake him out of his stupor. “God, you really do like her, don’t you?”

Poe can only nod, still hopelessly staring after his dream woman who he’s definitely chased off for the thousandth time, and God, she’s never going to talk to him again, is she?

Finn sighs. “Fine. I’ll help you fix this, if only because I am so very tired of seeing you two idiots trip around each other.”

“Really?” That gets Poe’s attention, fully. “You’d really help me?”

“Yep,” Finn says. “Whatever stupid grand gesture you cook up – because you better cook one up after how bad you messed up – I’ll help. Just let me know.”

***

Poe figures out what he wants to do a week later. He spends all afternoon setting it up, and when he locks the library doors at 6:00 p.m., he shuffles nervously to the display case between the entrance and the current best-seller bookshelves.

It’s a glass-fronted case, and he’d put up a shade in the windows this morning to hide his progress, on the off chance Rey wandered in during his shift. After fussing and fidgeting with a few more things, Poe walks to his office to do some deep breathing exercises and collect the final piece.

At 6:30 p.m. he hears shuffling outside the doors, and a muffled conversation.

“If there’s a seminar, why are the doors locked, Trooper?”

“Huh, I don’t know, Poe must have messed up.” The doors slide open, and Rey Kenobi walks in completely unsuspecting and mid-eye roll.

She freezes when she sees Poe standing there, by himself like an idiot, hands behind his back and what he hopes is a charming smile on his face.

“Finn?” Rey calls out, not tearing her eyes away from Poe and his attempt at an apology. “Did you—”

“You two have fun!” Finn hollers, slamming the doors shut and locking them. Poe can hear him cackle as he walks away from the library.

“Hey,” he says softly, suddenly very unsure of this gesture. Finn had assured him it was the “right combination of sad and cute,” and Finn seems to be the closest thing Rey has to family, so he trusts him.

“Hey,” Rey returns, walking forward with her hand on her opposite elbow. She stands awkwardly in front of Poe and her eyes dart over to the display case. “Did you –”

“Did I?” Poe asks, gnawing on his bottom lip nervously. _Did I piss her off? Did I freak her out?_

Rey keeps walking forward until she’s right up against the glass. “Did you really do all this for me?” She asks, turning around with wide, too-bright eyes.

The display case is full of books on astronomy, books on physics, stacks and stacks of books on outer space – on top of each stack in the middle of the display, is a different children’s book about saying sorry. Poe coughs awkwardly, and then steps forward to switch off the lights in the front area of the library.

Rey gasps, softly, her head tilted back to see the glow-in-the-dark stars – 200 of them, Poe had counted this morning as he put each individual one up himself before the library open – surrounding the display case.

“Here,” Poe coughs again, and hands her a card.

It’s got a picture of a sad planet on the outside, and a speech bubble that just says, “There’s a reason they call me _Uranus_.”

It’s not the best joke, but Rey snorts all the same when she opens the card: Poe knows that the inscription inside says “Sorry for being an ass,” because he made the card himself.

“For Rey, who deserves the stars.” She reads that out loud and looks up, and in the strange green-glow light of the artificial stars, Poe remembers almost violently how beautiful she is.

“Poe,” she says, and his name in her mouth is too much for him, too much for his heart. “Poe did you really do all this for me?”

Poe nods, and then holds out his other hand. “Apparently these are called stargazers,” he mutters, the pink lilies a strange color in the semi-darkness. “Maybe a little too on the nose, but they’re pretty, and you’re pretty, and I’m pretty hopeless, and I just wanted to say sorry, and now you probably think I’m insane. Ugh.” He makes a face, but Rey takes the flowers from his hand and strokes a finger down the petals of a bloom wonderingly.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “And you can stop saying you’re sorry. I forgave you a while ago. But Poe, all this -- It’s too much.”

“It’s not enough,” he insists, shaking his head. “Rey, it isn’t enough, it could never be too much, not when it comes to you.”

“I thought you didn’t even like me,” Rey laughs, wetly, tears obvious in her eyes. Poe’s going to start crying in a second himself.

“I more than like you, Sunshine,” he says solemnly, and he can’t feel embarrassed of it, not when it’s the truth.

Rey sets the flowers down carefully on the nearby reading table, and then she’s walking forward, quickly, into his arms. Poe doesn’t know when he held them out for her, but it feels like it’s been maybe his entire life, his entire life spent waiting for someone like Rey Kenobi.

“I more than like you too,” Rey whispers, and then she’s kissing him, and it’s so good, so much better than he even could have imagined. Rey’s soft and warm against him, and his hands move of their own volition to tangle in her hair, to pull her closer by the waist, to stroke down her neck. “Poe,” she says softly, but so, so happily, when his hands run lower and lower.

His name in her mouth is too much, he was right earlier – his blood runs hotter than it ever has, and Poe feels like he’s in his twenties again, he feels wild but at the same time like he’s found his home. He feels like he wants to pick Rey Kenobi up and tangle himself up with her on the nearest available surface.

So he does.

Poe grabs her under the ass and hauls her up; she catches on halfway and laughs, half-jumping with his movement and wrapping her legs around his waist. Poe walks forward, still kissing her, until they’re in the Best Sellers aisle, and oh God, his brain is short circuiting, and all he knows is Rey and the fact that the needs to be closer to her, now.

Poe presses her up against a bookshelf, and she digs her fingers into his shoulders, causing him to moan.

“This is not an appropriate use of a public space,” he scolds her, pressing a kiss that’s half-bite into her neck. Rey moans, high-pitched, her hips grinding down into his, and Poe about loses it. He starts to fumble with the fastening on her jeans, still desperate to get closer.

“You’re right,” Rey sighs, her hand closing around Poe’s wrist. “We should stop.” Poe stills his movements, immediately. He doesn’t drop her, but he doesn’t keep trying to undo that button. “Besides, I don’t want to lose my virginity up against a bookshelf.”

“What?” Poe stutters, almost dropping Rey. “Lose your –?”

“I’m fucking with you,” she says, laughing wildly. “I mean, I’ve only had a sex a few times, just to see if everything, you know, worked, but I’m not a virgin, I got that taken care of.”

“Taken care of?” Poe actually sets her down this time, sets her down so he can look her in the face. “Sweetheart, what does that mean?” His hands don’t leave her body, but he does pull away a little so he can look at her better.

“You know,” Rey squirms in his arms, weirdly embarrassed suddenly. “I was going into space, and I knew the risks, and I wanted to get it out of the way in case I, you know, died, or whatever. So I asked my friend Ben, and he helped me out.”

“Ben…Benjamin _Solo_?” Poe groans, desolately. “Rey, your ex-boyfriend is Benjamin fucking Solo? The astronaut? The son of Oscar winner Han Solo? _And_ former president Leia Organa?”

_Oh, that’s just. That’s great, that’s so great, that’s fine, that’s cool._

“Yes?” Rey quirks her head. “He wasn’t really my boyfriend, though, we never even went on a date.”

“What?” Poe asks, voice embarrassingly squeaky. “Yeah, no, we’re not going to fuck in this library tonight, nuh-uh.”

“Why, you decided I’m damaged goods?” Rey asks, defensively, her hand coming to push on his chest.

“No!” Poe shouts it, glad that they’re alone in the building. “Not at all, Christ, Rey, no I mean, I’m going to take you to dinner, on an actual date.” He bites his lip, considering. “If you want to. I mean, if you just want to have sex, I can do that too, I just …” Rey looks at him shyly, expectantly, and it makes what he wants to say that much easier to admit.

“I don’t just want sex with you. I want everything you’re willing to give me. I want to treat you the way you deserve, sweetheart. And I’m not judging you for your past experiences, not at all, I totally understand and respect your history with this stuff. But, God, Rey, I want to take you out, and I want to make you feel special, and wine and dine you, and all that bullshit they do in movies, because you’re worth it, you’re so fucking worth it.” Rey’s blushing, furiously, blinking rapidly in the way Poe knows means she’s trying not to cry, but he isn’t quite done yet. “If at the end of that date, or the third, or the fifteenth, you decide that you still want to have sex with me, I’m going to use that as just another opportunity to show you how much I like you. Because I like you, a lot, a stupid amount.”

Poe ducks her under the chin with his forefinger, as she’s looking down and to the side, and he wants to see her eyes when he asks: “So what do you say? Will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes,” Rey nods, and then she grabs his shirt to tug him closer. “Am I still allowed to kiss you in the meantime?”

“Definitely,” Poe grins. “Absolutely, positively, completely, yes.”

“Someone read the thesaurus when they were a kid,” Rey accuses, fingers lacing behind his neck.

“Indubitably,” Poe confirms seriously. He’s a little surprised that he can remember any words at all with her this close to him.

“Smartass,” Rey snorts, kissing him softly, briefly. “Got any synonyms for that?”

“Yeah,” Poe tilts his head so he can kiss her under the ear, and he’s overjoyed to learn that it causes her to arch her back and gasp softly. He wants to learn all the spots on her body that make her do just that. “Yeah, I do. ‘Rey Kenobi,’ for starters.”

“Peace/I will stop your mouth,” Rey says softly, closing the distance between them one more time to kiss him thoroughly. Poe loses himself in the kiss for half a minute or half a lifetime, it’s pretty unclear, her lips sliding over his with such precision and perfection, he’s shocked they haven’t been doing this for years. Then, just as she nips his bottom lip playfully, he remembers –

“Did you just quote _Shakespeare_ at me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that?
> 
>  
> 
> A wild third chapter appears?
> 
>  
> 
> hehehehHEHEHEHEH
> 
> (this fic ended up not being all that short after all)


	3. After Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah this is just an excuse for sex in a library?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is almost all porn, mildly kinky sex (sex in a public space, but not technically in public as its in a locked office when the building is closed) sex on a surface not intended for sex (please be nice to card catalogs) sex from behind, etc.

On Christmas Eve, two hours before they’re supposed to get in the car and drive to Kes Dameron’s house in southern California, Poe realizes that he left his father’s gift at the library.

“God,” Poe mutters, sliding a hand down his face, knocking his glasses down his nose slightly.

“Forget your dad’s gift?” Finn asks cheerfully, popping up from the sofa to grin at him.

“Yes,” Poe says testily. “Yes I did.”

“Huh.” Finn looks thoughtful (mockingly so). “It’s a shame no one reminded you to bring it home.” Poe’s already lacing his boots, waiting for him to just say it. “No, wait. I think… someone did…who was that, again?”

“You,” Poe answers, snagging his duffel bag and throwing it over his shoulder. “You did, you annoying piece of—”

The doorbell rings, and Poe smiles, knowing who it is. “You sure you’re good to watch Bebe over the next few days?”

“Yep,” Finn nods. “Yeah, Rose is coming over here, and we’ll probably just stay in tomorrow anyway.”

“Thanks, man,” Poe says, walking over to the door to open it. Rey Kenobi stands in the threshold of his apartment, wearing an absurd reindeer sweater over leggings, her hair up in two buns, and a smile plastered on her face.

“Ready?” She asks, bouncing on her feet. She has a backpack slung over her shoulder.

“For what?” Poe feigns ignorance.

“For _Christmas!”_ Rey squeals. “Christmas, Poe!” His girlfriend (and what parallel universe is this, that Rey freaking Kenobi is his _girlfriend,_ of three months, no less) walks in the door and kisses him soundly. Finn retches from the couch, and Poe doesn’t need to be a mind reader – doesn’t need to open his eyes, really – to know that Rey’s flicking him off. Finn jokes about their “lovey-doveness” but Poe knows for a fact, thanks to multiple drunken rambles, that Finn feels very positively about their relationship (“I just **_hiccup_** want my Peanut to be happy, y’know?”).

They break apart, if only because they have to, and Poe leaves his arms around her waist, and kisses her neck, right under her jaw, where he knows she’s sensitive. Sure enough, Rey shivers gently, and Poe smiles to himself, glad that Finn couldn’t see that.

“We have to make a stop at the library before we eat dinner,” Poe says apologetically. “Sorry, Sunshine. Left my dad’s present in my office.”

“That’s okay,” Rey beams at him. “Is Finn coming with us?”

“No, Finn is staying right here,” Finn says. “My girl’s coming over, and I already ordered pizza. I have literally no reason to move, Poe’s disorganization be damned.”

“You wound me, buddy.” Poe clutches at his heart dramatically, and then the three of them say their farewells for the next couple days. He and Rey leave holding hands, and Poe opens her door for her when they get to the car.

“You’re too sweet,” Rey says, blushing slightly all the same.

“Not as sweet as you,” Poe answers without missing a beat. He jogs around to his side of the car, and he’s in such a good mood, he even lets Rey blast Christmas carols the whole way to the library. They pull up into his assigned spot at the same time “Last Christmas” comes on, and Rey has such an intense interpretative dance for it, Poe doesn’t shut off the car until she’s all the way done.

“This year/to save me from tears/I’ll give it to someone special,” Rey warbles, ending with a sweeping, dramatic pointed finger at Poe. She winks, and he leans over the console to kiss her. They get out of the car and head up to the locked doors.

While he fidgets with his ring of keys, Rey continues to sing Wham’s ridiculous hit, and Poe grins despite his own sworn hatred of holiday songs. She moonwalks backwards into the library, and Poe walks patiently beside her, waiting for – yep, she trips when the ground switches from linoleum to carpet, and Poe twists effectively to catch her.

“My hero,” Rey sighs, hand over her heart and long lashes fluttering.

“Mhm,” Poe snorts, helping her right herself, and then, while they’re walking towards his office, as if his mouth had hijacked the rest of his life, he laughs and says, “God, I love you.”

Rey stumbles again, and Poe panics. They’ve been dating for three months, sure, and he’s loved her for longer than that, but she’s just had so much _shit_ in her life, and he doesn’t want to stress her out or add pressure to her, and fuck, what if she cancels on the trip, what if she doesn’t want to meet his dad, now (but really, he’s never brought a girl home to meet his dad, especially at Christmas), what if he’s ruined everything?

“I can hear you over-thinking,” Rey whispers. They’re standing right in front of his office, and her hands reach out to catch his own, which he now realizes are balled into fists. She strokes her thumbs over his knuckles until he relaxes his grip, and then she slides her fingers through his so they’re palm to palm. “Poe Dameron, I love you, and you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He wonders, briefly, if she’s shoved him off of some great height because the swooping in his stomach is a feeling he’s always associated with flying, or falling. “Really?” Poe asks, blinking. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose, and he fights the urge to push them up. 

“Really,” Rey laughs, “Really, Poe.” He kisses her then, catches her up in his arms and pulls her in close to his body, a groan building in his throat. Rey Kenobi, a literal space goddess, loves him, perpetually frazzled and shy librarian. What on earth did he do to luck into this?

“I love you,” he murmurs, surging forward more with his hips until her back’s pressed up against his door. “God, I’ve loved you for so long now, Sunshine.”

“Yeah?” Rey asks, arching her back when his lips travel downward to latch onto her neck. “What are you gonna do about it, Mr. Dameron?” Poe snorts at her obvious, thinly veiled suggestion, and he fumbles with his doorknob, letting them fall backwards into his office.

They don’t separate as they stumble in, Poe’s grip only tightening on her waist. He’d worry that he was holding her too tight, but Rey’s hands are fisted in his hair, and he knows for a fact by this point in their relationship that she’d actually smack him away if he did something that bothered her. Rey’s fingers come to his belt, and she undoes it quickly.

“You really want to have sex in my office?” Poe asks, laughing lightly, but not moving to stop her. Hell, he wouldn’t mind. He just wants to make sure she doesn’t want to drive home. Or to a hotel. Or go anywhere she wants to go.

“I want to have sex with you everywhere, all the time,” Rey says cheerfully, as if that statement wasn’t the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to him.

At this point, it’s getting a little awkward to be this hot and heavy with Rudolph staring at him, so Poe grabs the bottom of her sweater and asks, “Can I please, please take this off?” Rey holds her hands over her head as a response, and Poe laughs while he tugs it up and over her head. He throws it, carefully of course, into the corner, and then looks at Rey, who’s now standing half-naked in his office, in her leggings and pretty red bra. They fall together, again, and Poe kisses her hard, his tongue stroking along the seam of her lips, Rey opening up to him as always with a happy sigh.

Rey untucks his button-down from his pants while they kiss, and Poe smiles and helps her with the buttons when she fumbles with them. “Pants?” She asks, hand at his zipper.

“Pants,” Poe confirms, his own hand drifting to her leggings. She unbuttons his jeans, and she shoves them down his hips unceremoniously, eagerly, and Poe gives her soft pants a slightly different treatment, kneeling down once his jeans are pooled around his ankles, and sliding her leggings down carefully, inch by inch, kissing the skin that he reveals, slowly. Rey gasps and falls backwards slightly, her hands gripping the hard surface of the card catalog in the corner of his office, a relic of older times at the JPL, and Poe takes that as an invitation to nuzzle back up the length of her now bare legs, his nose sliding up her inner thigh, until he rests, waiting for permission, at the edge of her underwear.

“Poe,” Rey whines, hands in his hair. “Are you going to fuck me or not?” She’s just as blunt as she was the first thirty times they did this – they hadn’t had sex until after their fourth date, Poe determined to wine and dine and woo her until she couldn’t be wooed anymore, and Rey had literally straddled him one day after a walk in the park, and asked him to let her ride him – he’d said yes, of course, without hesitation, and they’d taken the opportunity to be together like this as often as possible. Poe almost always insists on calling it “making love,” and Rey always calls it something slightly more crass (and he gets it, he really gets it, the distance she creates around herself and all the things that are emotionally intense, but God, he loves her, and she loves him) but tonight, he’s feeling a little more wild than normal, so he says:

“Yeah, I’m going to fuck you, now.”

Rey blinks at him, shocked. He’s never called it that, he knows, and he smirks at her slightly, feeling bizarrely cocky as he stands up straight and kisses her forcefully, gripping her ass and moaning obscenely as his erection, barely covered as it is by his boxers, rocks up against her heated body. Poe runs his hands up her back until he reaches the clasp of her bra, and he undoes it quickly, well-practiced now. He throws the item over his shoulder and without looking or breaking the kiss, he cups one small, perfect tit in his hand and squeezes gently, the way she likes, and he revels in the way she mewls and arches into the touch.

“I love you,” Poe murmurs, pulling away from her slightly so he can take off his boxers. Rey whispers it back, her face flushed while she kicks her own underwear away. “How do you want to do this?”

Rey bites her lip, grinning shyly, and then turns around. She looks at him over her shoulder, eyebrow quirked in faux-bravado. “How about this?” She asks. They’ve never had sex like this, ever, not standing up, and certainly not with Poe behind her. His persistent insistence that they go slow, make love in the candlelight while he worships her body has been met with resounding approval from Rey, he knows, but this. This has its definite appeal, he realizes.

“If you get uncomfortable for a second, just let me know, Sunshine,” Poe tells her, and Rey nods, smiling at him.

“I trust you,” she says simply, turning all the way around. Those three words mean just as much as _I love you,_ from Rey, and Poe’s heart swells so much he almost forgets about his current mission. Almost.

“Here,” Poe murmurs, sliding a hand behind Rey’s shoulder blades and pushing gently until she’s bent over the ancient card catalog. “How does that feel?”

“Cold,” Rey says, shivering for emphasis. It does … distracting things to her figure, and Poe’s eyes drift down to look at the perfect shape of her ass.

He kneels behind her, and tentatively runs his thumb along the outer lips of her, groaning when the tip of his digit catches on the wetness already forming from his minimal attentions. “Just cold?” He teases her. “Nothing else?”

“It feels nice,” Rey whispers, and Poe hums happily, standing back up, and slipping a finger inside of her.

“And that?” Poe asks, voice so low he wonders if she can hear him over her own whimper. “That’s just nice, too?” He twists until he knows he’s pressed up against a spot that can quite literally make his girl sing.

“More than nice,” Rey admits, shifting her hips backward, and Poe groans at the sight of it, her pushing back on him for more friction. He adds a finger, wanting to be nice at the same time they’re being naughty (and oh, he’s definitely telling her that pun later, after they’re done with this, she’ll laugh at that for an hour, he bets), and Rey keens, her hands gripping the opposite edge of the catalog. “Poe!” She says, turning around to look up at him with her large eyes. “I’m ready, I’ve been ready, please.”

“Alright.” Poe’s never been into denying partners anything, so he takes his erection in hand and presses up against her warmth. They groan at the same time, and Poe allows himself the not insignificant pleasure of running the head of his cock up and down her slit, gathering wetness and spreading it, and more than once, brushing up against her clit with purpose. Rey shifts her hips backwards, and he knows she’s had about enough of buildup, so he finds her entrance and pushes in, slowly, unbearably slowly.

“Thought you were going to fuck me, Mr. Dameron,” Rey mutters, the accusation in her voice diminished by the breathiness of the statement. Her walls flutter around him, and Poe grins, his hands coming to rest at her waist after he pulls his glasses off and sets them down carefully on the farthest corner of the catalog.

“I am,” he says. “You ready?” Rey nods, fervently, and Poe pulls his hips back and snaps them back in with more force than he thinks he’s ever used during sex before. Rey yelps and then shivers happily.

“Again!” Rey says. “Come on, Poe, come o—oh!” She’s cut off in her encouragement by the rapid pace Poe finally sets, thrusting in and out of her with enough force to make the catalog groan under the strain.

“Love you,” Poe pants, a minute into the grueling pace. “God, Sunshine, you’re so perfect, so sweet, so good.” Rey’s almost sobbing now, especially when he takes a hand off her waist, without breaking pace, to strum at her clit in time with his thrusts. “You okay?” He asks, slightly worried that she hasn’t said anything besides his name and some curse words. Rey’s usually even more verbose than he is during sex, cracking jokes and asking him about his day.

“Good,” Rey whimpers, still trying to thrust her hips backwards to meet his thrusts. “So good, Poe, holy _fuck._ ” Poe grins at the obvious compliment, throwing his hair out of his face, feeling great, feeling wonderful, especially when Rey tightens around him, several minutes in, her climax obvious and impending.

“Let me see you come, Sunshine,” he begs, his own self-control slipping. “You’re so beautiful, fuck, so perfect for me, like you were made for me, please.”

Rey whimpers and her body locks slightly, her head throwing back. Poe strokes a hand down her back soothingly as she clenches around him, and while she comes, Rey says, “I love you,” and yeah, he’s not so cool anymore, not when he’s coming just from the sound of that alone.

They stand there, panting, for a few more seconds, and then Poe pulls out, walks to his desk for some Kleenex, and walks back to help her clean up, Rey now sitting fully on the catalog, her back against the wall, and her legs dangling off the side.

“I love you,” he says again, when they’re both relatively clean. “You’re incredible, and I love you.”

“We just had sex in a library,” Rey says dazedly. Poe snorts and stands between her legs; he holds his arms out for her, and Rey leans forward to wrap her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. They kiss sweetly, a strange juxtaposition to the ferocity with which they just went at it in the middle of his office.

“Well, technically in an office,” Poe points out. “If you wanted to have sex in a library, full experience, we’d have to have sex out in the stacks.”

“Okay,” Rey says cheerfully. “When can we do that? Now? You’ll be good to go in ten minutes?”

“Maybe,” Poe laughs. “I’m in my thirties now, sweetheart, you’re dating an old man. Longer refractory period.”

“Humph.” Rey pretends to look irritated but fails when she curls into his chest like a purring cat.

“Besides, if we went for Round Two, we wouldn’t have time to eat.” As if to prove his point, Rey’s stomach growls ferociously.

“Fine,” Rey sighs. She looks back up at him and smiles. “Merry Christmas Eve, Mr. Dameron.”

“Merry Christmas Eve, Sunshine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops


End file.
